Ars Magica, Doomed From The Start

Simple Complications

13

MAY/12

Because Pyrus Greed wasn’t with the party at the start of the session we had a small simultaneous session in ims during the game, i will post a summery of that after the main groups summery.

In our third session we started with the party wakeing up on the beach of the oddly tropical island their covenant was to be established on. They had last left off sleeping there during the evening, having just gotten everything off the wagons & on the boat over to the island. They spent a bit of time deciding what to do next & fairly quickly agreed that they should go to the center of the island and find the location where the covenant would best be built, basically where the aura was the strongest & the land lined up the best. They knew they would have to use a special path to get to the location as it was hidden magically somewhat, check the Covenant for specifics.

Arathos de Gascony summoned some unseen porters to help them head off, and the grogs also helped, while John dashed forward as a fox to check out everything ahead of the group. The shape shifting mage found the way, testing the entrance technique & also had a few short conversations with the local fauna, asking simple questions, finding out a few different things as follows. Most of the creatures on the island were not indigenous & simply stopped by briefly. There were local wildlife though in the form of the monstrous black crows that John had seen earlier, all the wildlife avoided them as they were very violent and prone to killing anything they caught. The island possesses fruit on many of it’s trees, as well as the trees themselves, that the animals have never seen anywhere else before. Finally many of the creatures roughly mentioned an area inside the island witch is mysterious and few have ever gone to. John then rushed back to meet the others on their way.

The Magi & their grogs made the way to the clearing, physically able to feel the barrier protecting it as a thin film of spider webbing on their skin. Inside the clearing itself a humming sound seemed to resonate in the back of everyone’s mind, as if the ground itself was vibrating in a low frequency. The clearing is roughly 250 feet by 250 feet, surrounded by the thin top heavy trees of the island. 3 foot tall grass with the occasional shrubbery grows all over the field & it is quite flat, no boulders or dips or anything. Like the rest of the island however digging a few feet down will cause water to seep into the dirt making building a bit difficult.

Inside the clearing everyone started talking about what they should do first. For quite a while the conversation was centered around the various ways they could make a large cabin. Some of the mages wondered if they could just summon planks of wood, Arathos de Gascony thought maybe just summon walls of stone, though his ability to move and shape stone would be limited due to the lack of stone on the island. They mostly considered magical options, and talked about the limits of such (mostly in it’s short duration, usualy moon at best). Eventually they ordered their grogs to start cutting down trees and Vobis started trying to turn the trees into lumber & planks, succeeding moderately.

Aroun this time John got the idea that shrinking a portion of the trees would help the grogs cut them down quicker…and so he went about doing it. His very first attempt had…unexpected consequences. The entire tree shrunk instead of just a portion of it, and as it got smaller and smaller its branches turned to hands and its roots lifted out of the ground turning to feet. Once it reached only 2 feet tall a creature known as Cybnarl was looking at them. He was a trent, and a pissed off creature. It instantly started accusing them of being destroyers, enemies of nature, and then escilated it to calling them crazed giants. Everyone around the little thing was quite perplexed by it, and some of them found it quite entertaining, even as Cybnarl hurled clods of dirt at them. The magi talked to each other about what they should do with him & eventually John decided they could use one of the crates from the gargoyles that Arathos brought & keep the creature in it. By this time Cybnarl had managed to find a rock in all the small handfuls of dirt it was pulling up, and screamed out a victory cry before hurling it at john. However all this time Arathos had spent sneaking up behind the trent, and slapped a cloth bag over him. The thing screamed bloody murder, accusing them of blinding & binding him with dark magic, and then a bit later was placed inside the crate witch john layered with dirt, he seemed to calm down & be content in there, though he did insult aku as being a smelly woman once.

The little issue with Cybnarl seemed to kick everyone into a more direct method of making housing & each began making their own little places. Peter von Buren made a tent, John used the other gargoyle crate as a bed while in fox form, Al Ain made a hammock, Arathos de Gascony made a stone pyramid that sunk 2 feet into the ground but stopped after that…leaving a 4 foot tall door and then made a air hole in the top of it just in case he needed to escape the slowly sinking death trap & finally Vobis set up a pavilion.

Shortly after setting everything up is when the grogs & unseen porters finished bringing all the items, as well as apparently another magi. Coming into the clearing with a wagon and horse & 3 new grogs, Pyrus Greed introduced himself & was welcomed quite nicely by everyone except for Al Ain who seemed to imply that mages from Flambeau were destructive & untrustworthy. Pyrus mentioned the grogs that were still at the fisherman’s place & none of the mages seemed to really care about that.

That is where the session ended, we ran a bit late but it was fun & worth it.

Pyrus Private Session Summery

This “session” was simply what he & i were doing while the groups session was working towards his entrance.

Pyrus had recently reached the cliffs overlooking the sea, with the covenants island out in the distance. Noticing a lot of recent tracks he headed towards the fisherman’s house & met the grogs there. He spent a bit of time trying to figure out a way to get him & his belongings over to the island but eventually decided that the magic it required was unlikely to succeed and possibly beyond his power. In a very friendly manner he tried to get the grogs watching the horses & wagons to come to the island with him but they were very insistent at staying there, despite having no real clue as to when their masters would send for them…

So Pyrus with his wagon and 3 grogs headed to Port Cana, but the mage himself stayed outside while the mortals went in and secured a route to the island. It ended up costing Pyrus quite a bit of coin, so much that he considered just risking building a raft again, but after figuring out that he would need to walk back to the fisherman’s before he did so he just coughed up the money for a ferry. It had taken the grogs a while to find someone who was willing to bring someone to the island, a place that apparently around here is considered enchanted & extremely dangerous.

The captain of the ship was…polite but not particularly helpful. Pyrus asked him about Leviathan but the man flat out refused to talk about anything related to that, especially while going to the island he supposedly laird around. Pyrus also asked if the man would be interested in a more permanent contact, ferrying people to and from the island as well as unique goods that are on the island. The man was quite insistent that he wasn’t interested & said he had no clue about anyone in town who would be. He’s a captain, not a diplomat or merchant were his exact words.

The 20 mile boat ride went smoothy & despite how obvious it should have been the captain was very surprised when Pyrus mentioned he would be living on the island. The mage then got off and talked to the other magi’s grogs on the beach, having caught them as they were leaving inland with the very last load. He then sent the captain away who was quite happy to take his sizable pay & go back to Port Cana.